Pre-service English Language Teachers in terms of Their Orientations of Motivation in Turkey’s Context

Tarık Yütük

Abstract

This paper seeks to investigate motivational orientations of Turkish prospective (pre-service) English language teachers in a descriptive way. In a state university in Turkey, 35 male and 90 female pre-service English language teachers participated in the study. These participants were 38 freshmen, 69 junior, and 18 senior students. A motivation scale adapted from Gobel and Mori (2006) was administered to the participants. The results showed that pre-service English language teachers have a high level of the intrinsic, integrative, and instrumental motivational orientations for learning English except the extrinsic one. Moreover, although the female participants displayed higher motivation than their male counterparts, the difference was not found robust enough excluding the intrinsic motivation. Moreover, it was obtained that the motivation levels of learners showed fluctuations in the course of time, which is congruent with previous studies. Lastly, the findings were further interpreted and elaborated within the discussion part.